Spiritual teachings by Shunyamurti, the founder and director of the Sat Yoga Institute - a wisdom school, ashram and the home of a vibrant spiritual community based in Costa Rica.

Archive for the 'Retreat' Category

Excerpt: ”. . .Because the I-thought, once it is conjured up from the Emptiness, identifies with matter. And the I-thought becomes linked with the physical body – with what gets taken, mistaken, for a physical body. It is not actually so much a physical body or a physical world, but a world of surfaces. And this is the key point because the I-thought eliminates depth. The I-thought converts the world into only a labyrinth of surfaces; there is no depth. Even though we have a concept of volume, but if you open anything up all you’ll find again are just surfaces . . . it’s all just literally superficial. Where is the within? Where is the essence? The world cannot consist only of surfaces. What is behind the surface?” Recorded during the Planetary Rebirth retreat, on the morning of Sunday, December 28, 2014.

Excerpt: “Once again we enter upon a timelessness – but this time because we are out of time; and the only way forward will be for those who are out of time. Time as we know it is coming to an end. But time as we know it is only history and now begins Godstory. But Godstory is a moment that is timeless and of changeless solitude, a time in which the Real is recognized as the immutable, the supernal and sempiternal Light that underlies and pervades all of the illusion called time.” Recorded during the Gratitude and Goodness retreat, on the morning of Thursday, November 27, 2014.

Excerpt: ”Everything on the plane of matter is a code. The job of the human intelligence is to break that code. When you have cracked the code you will be able to achieve freedom. But you must be able to crack the code of everything; that’s how the light gets in. And that’s why it’s important to understand and study the religions of the world, but all of the religions, it’s not that one is true and the others are false; they are all true, and they are all false. They are false if they are misunderstood – just as you are false when you misunderstand yourself. This is why the film The Matrix is still the most important cultural achievement of the postmodern period because it pours the wine into a bottle that can be related to by this computerized culture. So the first step that everyone has to take is to swallow the red pill. . .” Recorded during the Gratitude & Goodness retreat, on the morning of Monday, November 24, 2014.

Excerpt: ”Once upon a timelessness there was only consciousness, all alone. And because consciousness dwelt in timelessness it was lonely, it is lonely, it will always be lonely – there is no other; this is its one sanskara. And it has no form, so it can’t even look in a mirror; has no name, there’s nothing to do. It has no TV, no Internet; it’s just consciousness, in infinite, eternal, boring bliss. So what is a poor lonely Supreme Self to do? It dreams up a world! And it dreams up very interesting worlds.” Recorded during the Timeless Truth retreat, on the morning of Tuesday, September 30, 2014.

Excerpt: ”As the duration of the silence extends, an impulse to go back into the suffering arises – a very strange, paradoxical impulse. And it is this final death throe of the soul that becomes the last obstacle to letting go of maya. There is a preference to hold on to the agony, rather than to die into the peace. And as long as there is any shred of the soul left to try to control things, it will hold on to its death rattle, to its refusal to go gently into that good night . . . and it will rail against the dying of its false light. And it is at this point that there must be the power of surrender to the Absolute to let go of that peacelessness. And to face the transition into the silence which will first appear as a loss, and even as a strangulation of the soul, which in a way it is, as it is finally put to rest. . . . But once the step has been taken, and that Beyond recognized as the real home, as the ultimate abode, then everything becomes very, very simple. And as the attention turns toward the infinite and away from the finite, away from what has been lost from what has died, into what has been discovered, then the power of Love, the meaning of salvation, the truth of redemption, the energy that supports the universe, the stillness which contains all in potential form is recognized as the ground of one’s Being.” Recorded during the Death and Rebirth Retreat, on the morning of Wednesday, August 27, 2014.